On This Day In History – March 7

Birthdays

• 148 Lucilla, Rome, Roman noblewoman (daughter of Marcus Aurelius and sister of Commodus) (between 148-150 AD), born in Rome
• 1849 Luther Burbank, American horticulturist who developed more than 800 strains and varieties of plants, born in Lancaster, Massachusetts (d. 1926)

Events

• 161 Roman Emperor Antoninus Pius dies and is succeeded by co-Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Lucius Verus, an unprecedented political arrangement in the Roman Empire
• 1530 English King Henry VIII‘s divorce request is denied by the Pope
• 1774 British close port of Boston to all commerce
• 1798 The French army enters Rome: the birth of the Roman Republic.
• 1857 Baseball decides 9 innings constitutes an official game, not 9 runs
• 1870 Cincinnati Red Stockings, 1st pro-BB team, begin 8-mo tour of Midwest & East
• 1876 Alexander Graham Bell receives a patent for the telephone in the US
• 1911 US sent 20,000 troops to the Mexican border
• 1936 Hitler breaks the Treaty of Versailles by sending troops to the Rhineland
• 1962 Beatles made their broadcasting debut on BBC radio
• 1965 Alabama state troopers and 600 black protestors clash in Selma during “Bloody Sunday”, protesters beaten and hospitalized
• 1975 US Senate revises filibuster rule, allows 60 senators to limit debate
• 1994 ANC chief Nelson Mandela rejects a demand by white right-wingers for separate homeland in South Africa
• 2007 British House of Commons votes to make the upper chamber, the House of Lords, 100% elected